Electric Vehicles Are Overwhelmingly More Energy Efficient - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-15/electric-vehicles-are-overwhelmingly-more-energy-efficient <comment><USER2> > Bloomberg NEF forecasts sales of electric passenger vehicles ... to overtake > sales of those running solely on internal combustion engines in 2038.

Perhaps I am naive, but I would be surprised if it takes that long.

There are so many obvious benefits* to electric cars that the only thing holding them back from Mass adoption (IMHO) is the price of batteries. With such significant investments being made, and such steady progress being made, it is hard for me to imagine it will take almost 20 years to get to this point.

* Yes, range anxiety, cold weather's affect on performance and lack of charging infrastructure are all problems, but they start going away when cheaper batteries make electric cars cheaper to own/run, and more cars are on the road to justify businesses to start installing charge stations in carparks.

<comment><USER3> >it is hard for me to imagine it will take almost 20 years

You are drastically over-estimating the propensity for change of the majority of the population. In Europe we have diesel versus gasoline wars with supporters of each side declaring that the other is pure crap. The idea these people would just run the numbers, see that electric is more efficient and go to the dealers to pickup an electric car is funny.

We aren't even in the first phases of consumer adoption, we haven't seen the first waves of cheap knock-offs that try to capitalize on the trend and possibly set the public expectations about electrics to low levels. What we have is an american tech startup building a highly advanced and expensive car, and the major manufacturers hedging their bets and announcing electric models to make sure they are not caught off guard.

<comment><USER4> Today's "highly advanced and expensive car" _is_ tomorrow's cheap knock off. The sunk costs have been made by the Teslas of this world and economy of scale is about to deliver its magic.

It's ironic reading something like this on a technology website, an industry where scale and rapid development have delivered astounding value. Cars are just the latest product to be gobbled up by the same hyper-efficient industry.

My prediction is the car industry will look like the PC industry in the future. Complicated drive trains have been replaced by simple motors close to the wheel. You don't have to architect a car around them anymore. Scaling will produce more generic and interchangeable parts at much better prices. Soon we'll be talking about our latest build, but it will be a car, not a computer.

This has already started with enthusiasts transplanting reclaimed Tesla innards into other shells:

[https://youtu.be/o-7b1waoj9Q?t=291](https://youtu.be/o-7b1waoj9Q?t=291)

<comment> semi-extrinsic It's also ironic reading on technology websites how important everyone thinks the engine is in a car. While in fact engines are the least specialized and least failure-prone part of a modern car.

Your link to people transplanting Tesla innards into other shells: people have done this since the 1930s. Back then it was called a Hot Rod, today aftermarket parts in the US alone is a $300+ billion industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tesla (not mentioned in the article) deserves a lot of credit in accelerating the shift towards battery powered cars.

<comment><USER6> You are not wrong, but on HN, at least, I feel Tesla gets more credit than it deserves and Nissan doesn't get enough. I was an early fan; the roadster made me believe it was possible, but in the meantime, Nissan produced a mass market car and sold it worldwide in the hundreds of thousands. Only now, with the model 3, is Tesla arguably entering the same market . . . at the same time as everyone else, really. I will grant that they are producing on a larger scale than anyone else, but I'm not convinced they can keep that advantage long.

<comment><USER7> The leaf is good and certainly helped, but in a way it alone (without the tesla model s/x) may have held back the mainstream adoption of electric cars as it had not dramatically addressed the challenges of battery degradation, charging infrastructure, 'atttactive' design, and range. Tesla showed the world electric cars could be had with almost no compromises by tackling those areas head on. This is what will move them from niche to mainstream, especially now with the cost making it accessible to most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quite a bit of the total energy consumed by/through any vehicle is in its manufacture. Due to their relative simplicity, I believe electric vehicles offer a clearer path to a more consistent high-mileage lifecycle, with the battery pack as the primary wear item. I'd love to see million miles become the norm.

<comment><USER9> Maybe this is a bit extreme. But I would love to see car makers be required to offer long term (5 years +, 100k+ miles) warranties for free. Force them to use higher quality components and be up front about long term costs. But allow them to exclude battery packs from the warranty.

<comment><USER10> Quite a lot already do: [https://myioniq.com/hyundai-ioniq- warranty/](https://myioniq.com/hyundai-ioniq-warranty/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looking around urban streets in the UK, the biggest blocker to widespread electric car adoption is almost certainly charging infrastructure.

Most people in cities here live in flats, terraced houses or other houses without driveways. Charging therefore needs to be on-street or in centralised locations. We have a handful of electric car charging points, but these are often full even now, when electric cars make up a tiny proportion of the fleet.

The amount of investment needed in street charging and supercharger like stations before electric cars can be the majority is absolutely vast here. It's going to need a lot of political will to happen.

I think the situation is similar across much of Europe and the rest of the world. The US model - a driveway for every house across most of the country - is quite unique globally.

<comment><USER12> (I just posted this in reply to a different comment. But it is more relevant here.)

On charging infrastructure, here where I live in London, a lot of the light poles now have EV charging points. They are very subtle: just a blue LED, a small black charger cover and a small Siemens logo. Everything else is inside the preexisting pole (diameter about 4 inches).

[https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/car-industry- news/2018/08/2...](https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/car-industry- news/2018/08/20/siemens-to-provide-london-street-light-ev-chargers)

I would never have thought of doing this. But once you've seen it, it's an obvious cheap, quick and non-intrusive solution.

<comment><USER11> That's a smart solution, but it doesn't solve the whole problem.

Since I became aware of lamppost charging I've been counting the lamppost to car ratio. It's generally somewhere around 7-10:1. Even if you convert every lamppost you're still only 15% of the way there.

There's also the power distribution problem. To charge a lot of cars takes a lot of power. A typical residential house uses 4760kWh/year in the UK - that's about 500W average. It's maybe 3x as much in the US - call it 2kW. The most basic, 13A electric car charger will draw maybe 3.1kW. A more reasonable electric car charger might draw 7kW. A supercharger is somewhere between 50 and 150kW. at the very least, you're doubling the amount of power you need to distribute to residential streets, at worse you're increasing it by a factor of 75.

Total UK electricity production is around 300TWh/year. We consume 46 billion litres of transport fuel a year - that's around 51GW, or 447TWh/year. Even accounting for the improved efficiency of electric cars, you're still looking at doubling the electricity production, and distributing that to 30 million cars, each of which is down a very long wire.

I'm all for electric cars, but there's some serious infrastructure issues we have to deal with before they're physically able to be ubiquitous.

<comment><USER13> If you own the lamppost, perhaps you could own orchestration of power delivery as well?

If load exceeds tolerances, the EV plugs apply a "rolling blackout" that oscillates through the network every N minutes, to give every car at least some juice?

Also, typical EV eMPG is double an ICE. LEAFs are 124/90 eMPG City/Highway, for example. That makes your math for doubling electrical production a bit less scary. The fact that EV charging is commonly off peak also makes it more convenient for the grid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Only about one in four or five of those gallons of gasoline you pump and pay for provide energy you actually use, and perhaps 60-70% of what statisticians call the world's primary energy use is really just waste"

Interesting.

<comment><USER15> Totally interesting! It's not waste for no reason. Energy transfers have thermodynamic efficiencies and at practical temperatures the transformation of chemical energy into shaft horsepower is like 30% efficient in a small engine. Making electricity from fossil or nuclear fuel in large plants is between that and 60% efficient.

<comment><USER16> > at practical temperatures the transformation of chemical energy into shaft > horsepower is like 30% efficient in a small engine

Does that also hold for hybrid electric vehicles?

<comment><USER17> Yes. That is the percentage of fuel energy that gets to your wheels. The rest is made into heat, and is why fuel engines need such big radiators - for every HP going to your wheels, a minimum of 2 go to the radiator.

Hybrids just recapture the heat from the brakes, another major loss point, but unrelated to the engine. If you want to actually get better energy efficiency you need plug-in hybrid or fully electric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are the environmental and energy costs of producing and replacing batteries? How abundant are the resources required?

<comment><USER3> 1 Billion cars require about 20% of the known reserves of lithium and recycling can be done with low losses. New types of batteries are developed that use less lithium or other materials.

At current prices and technology, the raw material price for lithium carbonate is around $600 per car, (60Kg at about $10 per Kg) and that price can give you an idea of the environmental impact, probably on par with the 1 - 1.5 tonnes of steel required to build the car and costing similarly.

Of course, "environmental impact" doesn't really mean anything unless you put it in perspective. We could talk about CO2 emissions during mining and refining - and we could reduce that to near zero by using electric mining equipment and clean energy. We could talk about the impact mining companies have on some beautiful South American salty desert, and I really have no answer there because it's all relative to how you value desert landscapes compared to urban mobility. Some people will surely claim it's unacceptable and we should all switch to bikes.

<comment><USER19> I bet some people would complain about the environmental impact of wooden bicycles because they use nails made out of steel which was recycled from old bikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Five years from now, it will be clear to anyone buying a new car that if it's legacy tech, its resale value is going to be essentially zero. Past that point, the trend towards electric will go exponential.

<comment><USER21> Yes that's already happening right now. The premise of buying an expensive car is that you can sell it a few years later for a predictable price. Once that price collapses, things get ugly very quickly. Once new buyers suspect there is an issue there, they will be very reluctant.

So, the luxury car market will shift to full EV a lot sooner than 2038. IMHO that's happening right now and will largely have happened by 2025 already. It's the rest of the market that will take a bit longer. Not because of a lack of demand but a lack of supply: it will that long to build enough production capacity. And while capacity is limited, the high end of the market is more lucrative to use the capacity for. A Tesla model 3 with 20% margins selling for 40-60K is more interesting than say the equivalent of a Ford Pinto for 15K with 5% margins. The economics of that are different if you have enough capacity to do both of course but that is not the case yet. As long as battery production is a bottleneck, people will be looking to put them in high margin products rather than low margin products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish I could afford an electric car, but the real cost of ownership for one is so far beyond my gassed Honda Fit that I can never justify it. Instead I just try to use my bicycle and e-bike as much as possible. Maybe when the Honda finally dies I can justify an electric car, but I doubt it unless they get a LOT cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here is a link that criticizes the BNEF report and argues EV adoption will be far faster [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/19/bnefs-latest- embarrassi...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/19/bnefs-latest- embarrassingly-lowball-ev-outlook/)

</comment><comment><USER24> No one talks about the used car market for EVs. The battery is by far the most expensive part and the most volnurable to fail. So much so that buying a used EV is a much riskier bet.

<comment><USER25> I dare say it's quite the opposite. Just write off and replace the battery and the rest is practically pristine.

<comment><USER24> A new battery will be pretty close to the price of the entire used car. Im not sure that is a valid economic proposition.

<comment><USER26> Citation please! This is FUD otherwise.

<comment><USER13> For a LEAF, $2.3k for a refurb, and >$6k for new. [https://electrek.co/2018/03/26/nissan-leaf-battery-pack- repl...](https://electrek.co/2018/03/26/nissan-leaf-battery-pack-replacement- program/)

Unfortunately, that's in the ballpark for a used LEAF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why not transition to EV motorcycles?

<comment><USER28> Because I don't want to die in what would be a mild collision in a four wheel vehicle

<comment><USER29> if we all drive ebikes the issue is less so

<comment><USER28> Sounds good, just let me know what day we choose to all simultaneously switch to bikes.

<comment><USER30> Many of us already have and the more people make this choice, the safer it becomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's sad that this "article" is not going more in-depth.

What bugged me most was:

> [...] it matters where the electrons going into an EV come from; coal-fired > power is [...] less than 40% efficient on average. [If ...] we lost 6% in > transmission, it would still add up to only 10 million barrels a day in oil > terms. The efficiency gain is overwhelming.

No! What about losses in the electric grid? What about losses in the battery? As far as efficiency is concerned, electric cars are just as bad as ICE cars, given their electricity comes from thermal power plants. Plus, a lot of rare earths are required to manufacture them, mainly for the permanent magnets in the synchronous motors and the batteries.

<comment><USER32> > What about losses in the electric grid? What about losses in the battery?

This is very small.

<comment><USER33> They're also very accurately quantified. Somehow the same losses in petrol full lifecycle tar sands to pump are not.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: VanityPageMaker - Easiest way to create your own personal brand page - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanitypagemaker.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the business co-founder at MakeLeaps in Japan. As a way to scratch my own itch for a simple online profile page, I wrote a spec, registered a domain, and project managed the creation of VanityPageMaker.

I considered using <http://about.me>, but somehow I prefer a simple HTML site that I can control, edit and host myself.

This kind of site is well within the talents of my co-founder Paul, but I opted to hire and manage freelancers so Paul could continue focusing on managing our small technical team building our invoicing platform for businesses in Japan.

Basic Tech Specs: Ruby on Rails + MySQL database + Nginx proxing to Unicorn workers, hosted on Rackspace Cloud Server.

This is very much a version 1.0, but all comments and feedback are appreciated. I'm in the process of writing a blog post on how I designed and built VPM as a non-technical co-founder and without writing a line of code.

For some sample profiles, please check the 3 featured profiles on the main page.

</comment><comment><USER2> I made one (Jason and company are good friends of mine). The site works as advertised. <http://www.kalzumeus.com/vanity>

<comment><USER3> That is the first time I've ever seen what you look like.

<comment><USER4> Well, he doesn't _always_ look like that. Sometimes he's sleeping. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is exactly what i've been looking for, for the past couple of years now. At first I was using MyOnePage and About.me looked interesting, but this solution is perfect for me because it gives me the granular control that I need. Some hosting might have been nice, but i'm certainly not going to complain at all.

I was stuck of a minute thinking about where I could host my html file since both my hosting sites are running Wordpress blogs and it can be a bit of a pain getting pure html pages to work alongside Wordpress - At least in my experience.

So i just opted for my public folder on Dropbox instead. Its as good as any other location, hopefully.

Unless anyone knows of any distinct reason as to why i shouldnt do it this way?

Here's my profile link: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3417415/krmmalik/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea of it just being a batch process for making creative files you can just dump into a web directory somewhere. Flavors.me and About.me are great, but if you want that extra level of editorial/functionality control.

I have to ask: is this just a fun project, or is there a business here? I have to wonder how many people really want/care about this extra control, outside of web developers, who would probably build their own from scratch anyway.

From a business perspective, you almost have a product that has competition (vanity page site) marketed to people who don't need it (web developers/administrators). A tough place to be.

</comment><comment><USER7> I though the final step was a little misleading. It made it seem as you have to enter your email address to get the download. I clicked download without entering my email address and I thought it was going to give me an error saying it need my email address. It worked, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback - I thought it was clear this step was optional with a call to action of "Generate my Vanity Page!" down the bottom, and text along these lines:

> Would you like to hear about exciting new features from VanityPageMaker.com?

> Enter your E-Mail and click SIGN UP to be added to the Newsletter list.

I'll have a think about the best way to communicate this though. Cheers for taking the time to comment.

<comment><USER8> Hey Jason,

I though the _exact_ same thing, and had even entered my spamtrap email before noticing that it wasn't actually necessary.

(By spamtrap, I just mean an old yahoo account that I never get emails I care about to).

It might be useful to include some text there indicating that you're all done creating your vanity profile now, and by the way if you'd like to sign up for the newsletter, here is how to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like this idea. The only suggestion I can make is to hire a really good designer to work on this because everything sort of looks all over the shop. To be a vanity page it really needs a solid level of polish on the visual side of things.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this significantly different than, say, flavors.me or about.me?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. This site does not require an account, and it doesn't host your profile.

It generates a zip file, generated by VPM after you've entered with your own text and images.

Then you have full control and ownership over your own profile, and you can host it wherever you like, such as mine on <http://www.jasonwinder.com></comment></comment>


How Bing's Editors Choose Sexy Images To Seduce You Away From Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1767721/how-bing-editors-search-for-sexy-images-to-seduce-users-from-google

<comment><USER2> How are they going to place those images inside Chrome's [disappearing] URL bar?</comment>


Dissecting the web with Ruby and Hpricot - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mostof.it/posts/dissecting-the-web-with-ruby-and-hpricot/ <comment><USER2> Careful if you start messing with Google results and sending them fake user agents, etc. You might start seeing CAPTCHAs before some of your searches ;-) You'd probably be safer sticking .nyud.net:8090 on the end of the hostname to go via the Coral Cache. Example: <http://www.google.com.nyud.net:8090/search?q=hacker+news></comment>


What startup/VC/tech/internet blogs do you read ? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Some of the blogs I read:

<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/>

<http://weblog.fortnow.com/>

<http://glinden.blogspot.com/>

<http://community.livejournal.com/evan_tech/>

I used to have a blog called CleverCS that you may have heard of.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like 37 signals blog ( <http://www.37signals.com/svn/> ). They do promote themselves, but they also have a lot of good insights. Apart from that, I main read what is linked to from dzone.com, programming.reddit.com, or occasionally digg, although not a big fan of digg.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd add o'reilly radar. Some interesting tech posts there every week or so.

Creating Passionate Users used to be a favourite but alas the writer has been the target of a vicious stalker and stopped writing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dick Costolo <http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/>

Marc Andreesen has been amazing lately.

</comment><comment><USER6> I rely on news.yc for most of this type of thing, but I check out <http://www.venturehacks.com/> on occasion.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wil Schroter - <http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/> No BS and to the point.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Other than the standard techcrunch, mashable, feld, kawasaki, slashdot etc.

<comment><USER8> Greg Mankiw: <http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/> The Electric Sheep Company: <http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/sheep/>

<comment><USER9> Mankiw also wrote an excellent economics textbook (actually a series - <http://www.thomsonedu.com/economics/mankiw/index.html)> for those who want a more in-depth perspective than he provides on his blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> www.remi-vespa.com, on outsourcing for SMBs</comment>


Imperative + Functional == :-) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/2012/12/08/ImperativeFunctional.aspx <comment><USER2> This gentleman seems to be talking about a dialect of C# with more functional idioms and parallel-programming friendly features. However, a link describing the actual language itself would have been much more interesting. Briefly looking at the PDF, it doesn't seem to offer much more than rust (apart from .NET interop, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, if it's your cup of tea), though the mention of a team at Microsoft using it as its primary language and having delivered "millions of lines of code" with it hints at a greater maturity.

<comment><USER3> You appear to be an emissary from the Rust community.

Let me make a request and hope you can forward it on to your dark masters in the land of Mozilla.

Please stop using every single topic on HN to mention "Rust does it better".

Bonus points: show off things actually made with Rust.

I've let it slide up to this point because any attempt to "get serious" was always countered with the excuse, "we're not reeeeaaaaady".

If you're going to keep proselytizing, you're going to be held to a higher standard. Also mentioning that Rust does it better without mentioning _specifics_ is pretty much the opposite of useful. All you're doing is namedropping, not sharing knowledge or meaningful information.

Summary of my preferred reactions to this comment:

1\. Add more content to your comment so it's substantive rather than name- dropping

2\. Ask the Rust community to stop trying to outdo the Haskell community at propagandizing (hi dons!)

3\. Start building things in Rust and show HN. A brief blog post describing pros/cons/future improvements would be boss.

<comment><USER4> I compiled rust tonight. It took longer to compile than it took me to read all the documentation. Strike one.

<comment><USER3> Congrats, you encountered my first complaint with Rust. Let me know how much fun the out-of-date documentation referencing syntax that no longer exists is.

If you ask about it or seek a redress you'll be told, "we're not reeeaaaaaady".

It's a state of affairs they've come to be quite comfortable with.

You're supposed to use Rust unless you're a Mozilla employee or intern, afaict.

<comment><USER5> What do you expect? They aren't ready.

I'm following the development of Rust with much interest. The design seems well-thought out, and occasional comments here by 'pcwalton, usually along the lines of "here's how we're trying to solve this problem in Rust", are always worth a read. I wouldn't start a project in it, however, for at least another year _unless_ my main goal was to experiment with the language.

When I did play with it a little, I indeed ran into problems with out-of-date documentation, but someone in #rust IRC (I think it was 'brson) very helpfully answered my questions and pointed me to some newer docs.

Perhaps your expectations are unrealistic. If you want a language you can use today for a real project, try Clojure or Go. I don't think you can fault the Rust project for being where they are now and communicating honestly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The paper is at <http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/170528/msr-tr-2012-79.pdf> (the redirection fails, but the url is in the query string...)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting goals but....

>> 1\. Create a single language that incorporates the best of functional and imperative programming. Both offer distinct advantages, and we envisioned marrying the two.

Imperative/Functional hybrid are nothing new. C#, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Scala, and Groovy all fit that bill.

>> 2\. Codify and statically enforce common shared-memory state patterns, such as immutability and isolation, with minimal runtime overhead (i.e., virtually none).

"Statically enforcing variable immutability...." Isn't that just a fancy word for "constant"?

>> 4\. Do all of this while still offering industry-leading code quality and performance, rivaling that of systems-level C programs. Yet still with the safety implied by the above mentioned goals.

He wants to allow for "pockets of imperative mutability tied together with functional tissue". That's not a bad thing but it's not exactly a "safe" feature if put in the wrong hands. Lots of people have written function objects with bad imperative code and side effects. Lots of people have fed them to their language's equivalent of the map function. That can cause bugs.

<comment><USER8> > Imperative/Functional hybrid are nothing new. C#, Ruby, Python, Javascript, > Scala, and Groovy all fit that bill.

Some of those languages are more functional than others. The Scala creator claims it's 50% imperative 50% functional. Others of those, e.g. C# and Groovy, are closer to 10 or 20% functional.

<comment><USER7> It a certain degree, beauty is a better indicator than percentages when it comes to how functional a programming language is. Scheme scores high in that regard. Python does okay if you stay moderate in it's usage. Any amount of functional programming in Java tends to be downright ugly and unlikely to pass most code reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 == Service Unavailable

<comment><USER10> Functional not so functional?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a blog article from one of the researchers on a project to bring more immutability to C#, among other things. The paper the article references is well-summarized in a C# context here: <http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/12/Immutable-CSharp>

</comment><comment><USER11> another thread, blog ref'g this paper

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4871661></comment>


"Data Marketplace" Infochimps Raises $1.2 Million - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/07/infochimps-funding/

<comment><USER2> Their data marketplace is pretty expensive. For any data you sell through their marketplace, they get a 50% cut.

<comment><USER3> yeah, 50% is a lot. I remember reading it as 20% a while ago, not sure when they increased it.</comment></comment>


Cotton Candy or Meth?  Woman Sues Georgia County Over False Drug Test Resultu - <AUTHOR> https://www.freep.com/story/money/2018/11/27/woman-sues-after-serving-jail-time-cotton-candy-mistaken-meth/2123922002/ <comment><AUTHOR> If your drug test can't tell the difference between cotton candy and meth why is it still being used?</comment>


Reddit Protests and China's Control of American Culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/culture-2-0/the-reddit-protests-and-chinas-control-of-american-culture <comment><USER2> This seems like another one of those "money is speech and there are no values higher" => "oh no suddenly foreigners are paying huge amounts for speech we don't like" arguments.

> Ultimately, if America is no longer the top exporter of culture, what > becomes of our identity?

Every other country is practically a net importer of American culture. Often to the detriment of their own. So they have had the same questions: is this just a market, or should there be cultural protectionism?

Edit: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/france...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/france- culture-war-united-states) "Culture is like chewing-gum, a product like any other." \-- Jack Valenti

<comment><USER3> the US constitution only applies to US persons. someone living in china doesn't actually have freedom of speech protected by our constitution.

<comment><USER2> What if they are the sole owner of a Delaware corporation? The corporation definitely _does_ have free speech rights, per Citizens United.

<comment><USER4> No, corporations do not have rights. The owners of the corporation have rights. If the owners are not citizens, then the corporation they own to not have rights only provided to citizens.

<comment><USER2> Could you dig up the bit of the SCOTUS ruling where it says that?

Edit: link please?

<comment><USER4> Citizens United, as you mentioned. Read it -- it's clear that the logic is that corporations are collections of individuals and as such, they have the same speech protections as individuals themselves.

<comment> munk-a This is not the reason, actually. Laws can apply to different types of actors, it has been traditionally read that "natural persons" are flesh and blood human beings, while "persons" can include organizations, this interpretation is part of how companies can be legally held responsible for their actions and really _really_ regrettable and complex. It is possible that the 1st Amendment text was written prior to the distinction between "persons" and "natural persons" was clear, and that has been argued - but for the time being all "persons" are afforded free speech, including corporations.

<comment><USER5> No, the GP was correct. Read the Citizens United decision. The finding was based on the concept that the rights of the people who make up an organization extend to collective action taken by that organization.

The decision had nothing to do with corporations being considered legal persons or the definition of person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have trouble what to make of the article. Mainly because it itself points out the central hypocrisy. The US is just as interested in spreading its values by means of entertainment media as any other country on the world, it just had more money in recent history than anyone else.

And with countries like China or India having a larger market, what does America want to do? Not let them invest in the US, accepting that different viewpoints will be expressed? Declare them invalid?

One of the positions that Americans broadly have always held is that when ideas are exchanged, the people overall can figure out what the good ideas are and what the bad ideas are, that's in fact the basic assumption behind liberal democracy. So if these Chinese cultural exports are just propaganda and all around awful, surely Americans will figure it out.

If there's something to them, and they're genuinely valuable and give a different perspective, then it would be bad to try to suppress them.

So by liberal democracies own standards, I find myself puzzled by the flat-out fear of foreign cultural imports.

<comment><USER7> It's not so much fear of cultural imports as it is about political influence from a foreign government. The article makes a good point about how "Seven Years in Tibet" came out before Chinese money started flowing into Hollywood, and how perhaps that movie might not be so easily made these days.

There's something you didn't mention when you talked about how "USA wants to spread its values too." American companies that invest in Hollywood and sites like Reddit generally aren't partially owned by the government, and certainly aren't subject to as much government control.

<comment><USER8> "Seven Years in Tibet" was made without Chinese money, so why couldn't the same movie be made today without Chinese money? It's harder because everyone else is taking Chinese money? I don't buy it.

<comment><USER9> "Make this movie, and you won't get any more investments from us. We've said the same to your distributor and producer. And we'll make sure every corporate board we have influence over will shun you."

<comment><USER10> And then the next producer will make it, enjoy the financial super hit and get super rich by doing it. That's how markets work, supposedly. If one company doesn't want to do something that is in demand, others will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Breaking news: The world's 2nd biggest economy now employs the same soft power techniques as worlds largest economy.

World's largest economy is shocked and outraged.

<comment><USER12> China isn't just a large economy. If it was the European Union buying interest in Reddit, nobody would bat an eye, because Europe shares America's values of freedom, rights, and equality as cornerstones of society, arguably moreso. China is a repressive one-party state where dissidents are regularly silenced by imprisonment or "disappearing", citizens are ranked for party loyalty the same way Americans are ranked in economic creditworthiness, and ethnic minorities are imprisoned in concentration camps. They are the last people we want to be running prominent public forums.

<comment><USER13> We've all got problems.

China's problems are routinely exaggerated and "othered" far in excess of Western problems. After all, we understand the context for Western missteps. "Its complicated."

For example, can you believe that China is overreacting and violating civil rights after terror attacks from Central Asian Muslims? I've never heard of such a thing. Certainly no Western country aside from the USA, Russia, the UK and France would do that.

Meanwhile, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty doesn't seem to count for much.

They have a different history, different culture and different challenges. Demonization is not only wrong, it's a surefire way to mishandle the situation out of ignorance.

<comment><USER12> For one thing, that's not an example of "overexaggeration in excess of western problems". Just because Chinese crimes against humanity in their western provinces is new to you doesn't mean they are new.

Do you think the Dalai Lama is living in India because he likes the weather?

When was the last time America rolled tanks onto their university campuses to shoot students until they fell in line?

<comment><USER2> > When was the last time America rolled tanks onto their university campuses > to shoot students until they fell in line?

Well ... May 4, 1970. But there were no tanks and they only killed 4 students.

<comment><USER14> So... never.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It might not be a bad idea to to set up media ownership rules that exclude entities that are based-in or controlled by non-democratic regimes.

<comment><USER16> Ignoring the oversimplification aspect for a moment, would that not be quite ironic from a philosophical standpoint?

<comment><USER17> It's a well-known paradox [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

<comment><USER9> According to that 'paradox', tolerant societies could never evolve from intolerant ones.

<comment><USER12> That is a complete non-sequitur. Free societies need to oppose those who would destroy their freedoms. How does that have any bearing whatsoever on whether free societies can be established?

<comment><USER9> > need to oppose those who would destroy their freedoms

Of course no-one can argue against it if you re-state it like that. But the paradox goes much further: "Popper asserted that to allow freedom of speech to those who would use it to eliminate the very principle upon which they rely is paradoxical."

<comment><USER12> And this means that free society cannot be established because....?

<comment><USER9> Tolerant, not free. The terms are not interchangeable.

The paradox implies it because if the ideas of tolerance are so fragile, that even in a majority tolerant society, intolerant ideas present such a threat as to consider sacrificing even free speech, then how could they have ever come to dominate in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The number-1-zeroth-order-term-in-the-Taylor-expansion characteristic of Chinese culture is Han racial superiority. So how the hell is Chinese culture "vying" for cultural leadership when it is intrinsically exclusionist?

Now censorship, propaganda, etc., as well covered in the article — now you're talking.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't read about Han racial superiority before. Any book or article suggestions? This Economist[1] article seems like a good starting point.

[1][https://outline.com/34FXDU](https://outline.com/34FXDU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The comparison to Chinese influence in Hollywood is pretty apt. The point being, the Chinese companies don't need board seats to exert influence.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been a part of a lot of acquisitions, and a lot of investment rounds. The stakeholders always want to start stirring the pot sooner or later. Maybe you get a year or two of being left alone, but eventually, it always happens.

<comment><USER21> Could you elaborate a little? I have no doubt this happens but I'm fascinated in the nuances of how it happens(changing the flag from China to NK for example). Or is it more overt? (Do this or x, y, and z)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I didn't realise Tencent owned so much of Epic. I wonder what that means for the game industry at large given the huge push for the Epic store. Could we see the same effects we've seen in Hollywood?

</comment><comment><USER23> Are the investors actually making Reddit censor or is this just the latest xenophobic rage bait?

America sure loves its China/Russia scaremongering.

<comment><AUTHOR> The crux of the article is around the 'investors making' anyone do anything. It doesn't really work like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The threat of Chinese censorship was feeling all too real _on a site that > had historically embraced the extremes of free speech_.

Any active Reddit user with non-left leaning political views will most certainly find this assertion amusing at a minimum.

In a similar vein I'd almost rather buy an Huawei phone over an American one _because_ I don't care about China's interests nor live there, so I don't fear them censoring my posts or kicking my door down over some innocuous statement I made online. And for those who think that won't ever happen in the west the UK has already done 2am night raids over a person's tweets. But most redditor's didn't put up a similar fuss over a real life example of the thing they fear from China because he was a (legitimately) douchey right winger who didn't fit into their ideological bubble.

In practice I'd bet far more regular North American and European Reddit users will be banned and have posts deleted for not sharing (by mainstream western standards) the pretty radical left political world-views that is popular on that site's communities - which of course are world-views I see nothing wrong with, people can believe anything they want.

I don't know where I'm going with this other than to say I hope we in the tech community stand against all forms of censorship, not just the one's that fit into their particular pet ideologies. There's plenty of history and literature since the 17th century enlightenment that anything less is a very dangerous path.

<comment><USER25> Yea. Historically is the context there. Even when presented with examples of censorship on reddit, the users completely ignore it. But... the Chinese come in, and now the possibility of censorship is a big deal.

ffs... they seem to only be able to see slightly past their own noses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant Aaron Swartz historic. Current Reddit censorship (and really censorship on all the major platforms) is very different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That image at the top is just cringeworthy.

<comment><USER25> Agreed. If anyone has been paying the slightest bit of attention, the reddit snoo is driving the tank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reddit and all other companies should really reconsider taking chinese money.....

</comment><comment><USER28> Leisure time on internet 90% of my friends spend their time with:

\- Riot Games - League of Legends

\- Supercell - Clash of Clans

\- Reddit (while waiting for games to load... riding bus.. work etc).

This acquisition will make 100% of their content Chinese owned !

</comment><comment><USER29> is there an uncensored version of reddit thats any good?

</comment><comment><USER30> I think a lot of people are missing the point. China is not an open and free society. It has hundreds of thousands of ethnic in concentration camps and is known to kidnap dissidents and silence opposition. It has implemented a social credit system purely for establishing party loyalty.

It's hard to imagine a country so against and anathema to Western ideals.

Let's put it in historical context, should we have allowed Franco, Mussolini or Hitler to have significant sway over US media and opinions at the time? How different might the world be now, had we allowed unchecked totalitarianism to spread its ideas before WW2?

We are approaching similar stakes now, where a country that is vehemently against everything we stand for is trying to influence us. We need to appreciate the severity of Chinese investment and not pretend like they are just another investor.</comment>


JavaScript-dependent Behaviours - <AUTHOR> http://www.degs.it/2011/09/javascript-dependent-behaviours/

<comment><USER2> Mmmm, this seems pretty subjective and not generally good advice.

For example, if you're building a header for a website. You of course wouldn't need the other images, if javascript wasn't enabled. But if you were building a slideshow of photos you took, you would.

Also, there's nothing wrong with using an 'a' tag for it's defaults. You're not going to trip up screen readers and, depending on your style needs, might save some bites on not having to declare the css for the anchor.

What you need to focus on is graceful degradation. Does it do what you want it to do as browser functionality degrades?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

I'm maybe a bit fixated with semantics, and I believe that HTML should describe your content and not how it behaves. Instead of graceful degradation I think in terms of providing a graceful enrichment. My process starts with a markup that describes your content and then JavaScript is added to make it better.</comment></comment>


What are unevaluated operands in C++? - <AUTHOR> https://humanreadablemag.com/issues/0/articles/what-are-unevaluated-operands-in-c/ <comment><USER2> A fun (or maybe horrifying) bit of trivia is that sizeof in C can end up evaluating its operand in certain cases; namely, when you use it on a VLA: [https://godbolt.org/z/-UX2KQ](https://godbolt.org/z/-UX2KQ)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you don't know what SFINAE is (the article uses the acronym a lot but doesn't define it):

> Substitution failure is not an error (SFINAE) refers to a situation in C++ > where an invalid substitution of template parameters is not in itself an > error.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_failure_is_not_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_failure_is_not_an_error)

<comment><USER4> This is a intermediate-level technique that's quite commonly used. Take a look at <type_traits> to find out what you can do with it! Specifically you can use std::enable_if in a return type or template parameter to conditionally enable an overload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Small typo near start:

> Up to C++17, there are four operators the operands of which are unevaluated: > typeof, sizeof, decltype, and noexcept.

"typeof" should be "typeid". This confused me a bit as I thought the article was going to talk about a nonstandard predecessor to decltype.

The article was interesting, but its contents didn't really match it's title. It's not about unevaluated operands in general but just their use in SFINAE specifically. For example, sizeof is dismissed as not much use for SFINAE, which is true but it certainly has a lot of other uses! And if you read this article having not seen decltype before, I think you'd get the wrong impression about its range of uses.

<comment><USER6> confusingly typeid can evaluate its expression parameter, if the expression type is polymorphic as the correct type info would be a runtime property (in fact I thought that typeid would always evaluate its parameters, but apparently that's not the case).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a potential solution to the problem of how to #define MY_ASSERT(x) in release mode such that it fails to compile if "x" is not a valid expression.

Previous I have used this idiom:

#define MY_ASSERT(expr) do {} while (false && (expr))

Another possible alternative might be:

#define MY_ASSERT(expr) sizeof(expr)

<comment><USER8> Note that lambda expressions are not allowed in an unevaluated context. What about this?

       #define MY_ASSERT(expr) do {} while (false && ((expr), false))

This doesn't require _expr_ to be convertible to _bool_.

<comment><USER9> Actually, the argument of _MY_ASSERT_ should always be convertible to _bool_ , even in release mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of tag dispatch to disambiguate is really clever. I never thought of disambiguating based on the conversion of the tag.

Edit: I have probably seen it in concepts lite though, I just forgot about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought this would be about the arm of a conditional not taken but as soon as he listed the operators it all became clear.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a c++ programmer but honestly hate the language more and more with every year, because it's so complex. Can somebody explain the first code sample to me?

<comment><USER12> I agree. I really liked C++11, it seemed to be a big improvement to the language, but ever since then, its just been getting more and more complex to the point where I no longer feel like I can understand the language at all anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Poor man's lazy evaluation. I'm sure they'll try to shoehorn monads in somehow with C++23

<comment><USER14> It's not lazy evaluation at all. Lazy evaluation is a runtime thing, where you delay evaluating an expression until you actually need to.

This concept is operators that will _never_ evaluate the expressions they operate on.

sizeof is the oldschool obvious one, sizeof(foo()) never runs the function foo. It's just a way of querying the static properties of an expression, asking specific things about its type in a way.

They're not new things in C++. sizeof has been around since the beginning.</comment></comment>


What It's Like To Drop 150,000 Feet Straight Down[use headphones] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aCOyOvOw5c

<comment><USER2> Awesome!</comment>


Using neural networks to detect car crashes in dashcam footage - <AUTHOR> https://blog.insightdatascience.com/crash-catcher-detecting-car-crashes-in-video-9c0522b04558 <comment><USER2> The source, as well as more in-depth description, is available at [https://github.com/rwk506/CrashCatcher](https://github.com/rwk506/CrashCatcher)

This is actually quite neat! Having little data and not enough resources to manually label thousands of examples seems to be a somewhat neglected problem. Maybe we should boycott Google's captchas until they feel the same pain :)

The comments in the code do read like a parody, though:

        count = 0  ### start a counter at zero

<comment><USER3> _Having little data and not enough resources to manually label thousands of examples seems to be a somewhat neglected problem._

It's not a neglected problem - it is an extremely active area of research, and something people deal with every single day when using ML in industry (do you feel my frustration there?!)

The problem is that there isn't a single generalization method that works well.

For specific problems there are numerous approaches which can help. Distant supervision, adversarial techniques, data augmentation, reinforcement learning etc are all areas to look at - but the specific technique depends on your exact problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who's interested (but not remotely capable yet) in this sort of thing, I think it would have been nice to see some more detail as to how the system worked - this seemed more of an executive summary to me rather than giving any significant technical details; is this true or is it my lack of knowledge showing?

<comment><USER5> To me this level of detail is perfect - but I do have some prior knowledge on the subject. I think it is difficult to put such a project in writing in more detail because many choices (framework, NN architecture, data cleanup procedures...) make sense only with data which probably can't be shared. So I think author did a great job selecting those pieces of information which are relevant to general public.

Btw, there are courses, tutorials and challenges online if you ever wish to learn more... It is fairly easy to get good info, but it takes time to grasp concepts. It is fun though and enables you to solve a whole new class of programming challenges. :)

<comment><USER6> _Btw, there are courses, tutorials and challenges online if you ever wish to learn more... It is fairly easy to get good info, but it takes time to grasp concepts. It is fun though and enables you to solve a whole new class of programming challenges. :)_

Any tips? Which classes would you recommend?

<comment><USER5> Well, I myself actually usually prefer text to video, so I just search for tutorials and read the ones that I feel I understand... So I can't really recommend any classes (but if you see Karpathy listed as author then it's probably good :)). Do check out Kaggle - there is nothing better than playing with the best and learning from them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 80% for 4 second clips, so running it on random video feed guarantees false positives in under a minute.

Not to mention this is trying to predict something human expert in the field (lets say a taxi driver) watching same clips couldnt do, its trying to predict future. Most likely triggers on something semi related, like amount of cars in front/roundabouts/red light, more cars = bigger chance of accident = strong correlation. Garbage in garbage out.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would like to see how the system generalizes on different videos. The motion pattern seems to be quite general ... this can be used to analyze crashes during racing events for instance ([http://www.tldvision.com/tld3.html](http://www.tldvision.com/tld3.html)).

</comment><comment><USER9> The author could also have used 3d simulations to obtain more data, and determine feasibility and proper hyperparameters for the network before training with actual data.

<comment><USER10> 3D simulations can't create _photorealistic images_. (Not currently, anyways)

<comment><USER11> You don't need photorealistic images for these situations. The images are always downsampled to a smaller resolution. So getting "good enough" but not photorealistic is fine.

<comment><USER10> If you have software to simulate real-world physics for hundreds of independent agents that can be run on a personal computer with _close_ to real world graphic fidelity (including realistic noise), you're running a _multibilion dollar company_ , not writing thought pieces on Medium.

<comment><USER3> There are a few companies you can get simulation software from specifically designed for self-driving cars. See [https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2017/10/26/self-driving- simula...](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2017/10/26/self-driving-simulation/) for some discussion.

It's true that this isn't photo-realistic (see [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7OccC0W_CU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7OccC0W_CU) for a video), but at the same time it is useful enough for training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can't they just use an accelerometer?

<comment><USER13> It looks like they are detecting crashes of _other_ cars caught on camera, not crashes of the car with the camera.</comment></comment>


Harvard University – CS109 Data Science - <AUTHOR> http://cs109.github.io/2015/ <comment><USER2> I've taken this course, and while the instructors clearly put a lot of effort into it, I found it missed the mark by quite a lot.

The assignments use fancy algorithms, but often with little motivation; as such, I doubt I will remember most techniques. Furthermore, the class didn't have enough prerequisites, and so the derivations and discussions were often soft or missing --- again, making it harder to learn. Most importantly, the time you spend on the class is dominated by the homework, but it suffered from the issue a lot of online coding courses have: if you are told to write a function, given its signature, behavior, etc, you _aren 't_ learning the material. instead, you chug away at it like it's programming 101, pass the tests, and move on without reading up on the methods that used that function. and that's exactly what happens with a large portion of the homework assignments in this class.

<comment><USER3> +1 this course was very much so either a) Do this basically exactly how we told you do do it, basically "filling in the blanks" b) Predict the midterm elections (well fuck, this is an intro class, I'm really not sure what to do)

I found it to be quite poorly structured, and its lessons did not translate well into being able to do data science off on your own problems

<comment><USER4> I agree about the homework, but that's why the project component was worth 40% of the grade and took the final month of the semester.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lecture videos are in Flash. Sigh

<comment><USER6> FWIW I didn't allow the flash to run and it plays fine using html5 video.

<comment><USER7> you can load the mp4's in VLC as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know the name for graphs like "Station Fullness Over Time of Day" is?

I don't remember having seen one before (I don't look at many graphs) but find it incredibly readable, even being color deficient. Also, can't say I dug further than the homepage, but it was striking enough for me to ask.

<comment><USER9> I guess its a heat map.

<comment><USER8> That makes sense. I guess the styling/presentation didn't make me think of it that way.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I took this class last semester and our team won best overall project from approx. 100 teams. iPython notebooks and writeup can be found at [http://project.chanceme.info/](http://project.chanceme.info/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Cs50 combined both theoretical and applied principles. Are there any specific prerequisites for this?

<comment><USER2> not really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I live in third world country, and universities are ludicrous. I have said this repeatedly, but I want to say that again because education is _the_ important thing in the world in my opinion, and free lectures/education is just like discovery of fire in human history.

If I were to choose prophets for humanity, I would choose the people who provide free _scientific_ material for humanity.

Not a bunch of schizophrenic from 14 or 20 century ago.

For those who live in developed country maybe you cannot realize how much impact can a simple series of lectures can have on students on third world country. I live in third world country, I can see with my own eyes how can it change people mind.

<comment><USER12> I live in an underdeveloped country in the Caribbean and i couldn't agree more.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Let's Be Civil - <AUTHOR> The release of the iPad Mini and the Microsoft surface have brought with them a rash of uncivil and inappropriate threads. I can count on one elbow the number of times I have seen the word "fanboy" or its faux-hipster alternate "fanboi" used in a comment that led to a productive discussion.
Everyone has opinions about consumer electronics. Everyone's entitled to them, even when they're wrong. I owned and liked a Windows Tablet PC at one time! But truly and honestly, are we discussing things that gratify our intellectual curiosity when we attack each other or the authors of the fine articles for their bias? Are we really bringing fresh insights to the table when we complain that the marketplace is capricious and sometimes values things we think are superficial?
As hackers--and I include in this definition those who hack software, hardware, social behaviour, and marketplaces--our mission is first to UNDERSTAND and then second to INFLUENCE. When we read a review, no matter what we personally think of its flagrant bias or the comments of others on the thread, we should aggressively throttle our temptation to wield the flame-hammer. We need to ask ourselves, "What understanding would my comment add?"
The same is true when we see someone else violating these precepts. The downvote (and flag, where available and appropriate) are the right tools for the job. Most of the time, calling someone out for diluting the discourse simply adds to the noise while simultaneously feeding the troll.
(This is one of the reasons I have a personal policy of either responding or downvoting but never both. If it deserves a constructive reply, why is it worth a downvote? If the reply would not be constructive, I downvote and move on.)
If we as a community are unable to throttle the bile effectively, then perhaps we should ask the moderators to do it for us. There's no shame in deciding that non-technical articles about iPads or surfaces or what-have-you are better off in /r/technology.
I know that in a few days or a week these articles will go away as the novelty of newly released products fade. But the reason I am speaking out regardless is that the echoes of this type of discourse last much longer and I fear they will spill over into other threads. I believe that forums like this need a zero-tolerance policy towards the kind of divisive incivility I've read lately.
I'll close by misappropriating an old joke: "Do you know why the flames about consumer electronics are so vicious? Because the stakes are so low." <comment><USER2> The root cause is not incivility, it's inanity. Why do we have threads about these not-exactly-revolutionary things sitting all over the front page? Who votes for this stuff?

The Surface one up there is just some guy's blog review. It's not poorly written, but why are we reading randomly selected Surface reviews? There's an entire post right now that is basically a Samsung press release via CNET, describing some (totally unquantified, of course) minor uptick in sales for the latest Android phone. There is literally nothing to talk about there except to proffer essentially baseless flames, praise, or speculation.

I would have no qualms asking the moderators to fix this. I can't understand any metric by which these are useful posts to have on the front page. There is lots of much better stuff sitting on the New page which is being crowded out by noise that I could go read in two hundred other places. "Intellectual curiousity" is not referring to what you have every time a phone comes out which is 20% lighter and 10% longer.

<comment><USER3> It contradicts the definition of civility to say that the root cause of it is things that annoy you. Civility only comes into play when things annoy you.

The HN frontpage has its ups and downs and has for a long time. If you don't like the stories, it's not going to improve the situation to be uncivil in the comment threads. It just provokes people to reply in kind. And a fluff story on the frontpage (assuming it is) is not improved by having a flamewar appended to it.

<comment><USER4> How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories?

Clearly it takes very little effort to upvote a fluff story to the front page and to keep it there. It takes substantially more effort to pull an interesting story up from the New page. For example, I am routinely disappointed with the Front page content, and yet I am very rarely browse the New page. Moreover, this is not going to change, because I know myself. I am guessing I am not alone. There's lot more people who would be willing to clean up the front page from the fluff than those who'd be willing to patrol New page in a search of fitting submissions. Just give us a chance.

<comment><USER5> _How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories?_

Anything belongs to the front page by virtue of _getting to it_. You can argue that the community is broken because it upvotes stuff you don't want to see, but that's a battle you just can't win.

Basically, you're suggesting that in addition to there being a button for "I find this interesting!", there should be another button for "No, you _fools_! No!".

<comment><AUTHOR> > there should be another button for "No, you fools! No!"

I have that button, it's called "flag," and that's exactly what it's for: Posts that are popular but toxic. If a post was unpopular, you wouldn't need to flag it.

<comment><USER5> Why do _you_ get to be the arbiter of what is "toxic"?

<comment><USER6> Why does anybody get to vote in the first place?

<comment><USER5> An upvote says "I find this interesting", but you're only speaking for yourself. If you deem something "toxic" to the community, it implies you know what's best for everyone involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the smartest things why the lucky stiff ever said (in my opinion): "When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. so create."

Notionally, this is a forum for creators, but it seems increasingly pre- occupied with utterly unproductive posturing over whose tastes are 'better'. It's a troubling trend.

<comment><USER8> What you find troubling I view as inevitable.

Tastes define what we create and how we create it. Tastes inform what we choose to compromise and what we protect in the process of making things.

So as we venture into new worlds – Surface vs. iPad vs. Android vs. Kindle may superficially be consumer products but more crucially they are platforms for building the future for a mass audience – it's natural that we're going to have to spill a lot of thought figuring out what's most important to us.

Will there be disagreement? Yeah. Will it be perfectly civilized? Almost certainly not, given rarity of good manners, social skills and healthy conflict management.

But that's life with the apes.

<comment><USER9> I think you could argue that taste often gets in the way of creating things. Those pre-defined censures you impose on your creation before it's even an embryo: "It'll be like this and sort of like this, but definitely not like this because that is so unsophisticated." It's your ego trying to deal with insecurity and fear of failure before your brain's logical centre has even had a chance to analyse the idea. Sorry I'm just babbling, I have no real-world examples of this but it's just a thought and it might or might not be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A reminder: let's be civil, not just in tech discussions, but in all of our discussions. Even when someone touches on a pet peeve, don't give in to the temptation to bend the rules a little bit.

In particular:

* yeah, I know you really like [company] and really don't like [competitor], but please don't say mean things about those who disagree with you, and _especially_ don't say mean things about the staff at those companies without very good reason

* it's election season in the US, which means more than the usual number of offhand derogatory comments about the other side's politicians and voters. Please refrain from this.

* I've seen a few shots taken at other peoples' religions. Principled disagreement is OK, but try to resist name-calling.

* There have even been a couple of recent arguments about nationality that have involved some unnecessary name-calling.

* As a final heads up, remember that even deleted posts may be cached by various external services that grabbed them via the API. It's good to think better of something after the fact and take it down as soon as you can, but it's even better to avoid posting nastiness in the first place.

As a community, let's do a better job of controlling our own posts first and foremost, and let's do a better job of downvoting and flagging when others cross the line.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think there is a reason why consumer electronics conversations get so heated that is even more important than what you've mentioned: the nature of the products forces us to choose between them. And we spend a decent chunk of money on them.

The multiplicity of products that we have to choose between and the lockin we experience once we've made the purchase (we have a contract for the phone and have made significant monetary commitment to the devices in general) mean we have to make a hard decision and then try to feel good about it.

Once we've picked, if we admit that another device is better, then we're saying that we made the wrong choice and that we have to live with a subpar device for another few years. Most of us tend to get defensive about our purchases instead, even when we are trying to be objective.

The truth is that there are trade offs between all of the devices that are related to our priorities, our personalities, and our social circumstances all of which make us feel personally invested in a gadget decision. This makes it hard for us to come from an objective place to talk about some of our favorite topics. Many of us are looking for validation more than information (I've definitely been guilty of this).

The trick, then, might not be to try and be more objective, but to take criticism of the products less personally. Headlines are meant to get clicks, not express thoughtful opinions. The intricacies of the tradeoffs are worth considering, but you won't find them in most tech coverage. Save your hate and try to understand why the competition is valuable to others and what your product could learn from.

<comment><USER12> It's about differing visions of the software industry as well:

* Apple's centrally-planned vision of how software should be managed versus Android's more anarchic vision

* Apple's leveraging of the software/design patent status quo as a business weapon versus the Android ecosystem's more laissez faire attitude towards the exchange of ideas

Whoever eventually wins in the market will set the tone of the software industry.

<comment><USER13> I think that this perspective certainly has validity. But I've also noticed a tendency towards making it too simple and this can lead to the sort of seeing- your-interlocutor-as-one-dimensional that OP is referring to. When it comes to ceding control of our devices to an authority, the choice hasn't always been between controlled and open, it's between Apple or HTC/Motorola/Samsung/Huawei and the mobile carrier. The situation may be improving, but it's still not great. For a host of reasons, some of them aesthetic and/or idiosyncratic, I'd rather give up a lot of control to Apple, because I know they won't give an inch of it over to Rogers, AT&T, or Verizon. It's true that buying an unsubsidized Google Nexus device sidesteps some of these problems, but large parts of the installed Android ecosystem seem to be more like feudalism than anarchy.

Too often I think the people on the Android side of the discussion assume that iOS folks just lack an entire collection of values around openness that they personally consider really important. The reality is that the market is big enough for similar values to be catered to differently. I don't like that I can't delete Newstand.app from my iPhone, but just seeing a pre-installed and undeletable "Rogers Anyplace TV Live" icon on a friend's Android phone makes me die a little inside. A lot of folks don't seem to mind so much. There's no point in trying to convince each other which is worse, it seems mostly dispositional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The replies about iPad vs. Surface vs. Android tablets have reminded me of nothing so much as the kind of silly arguments that console fans have over Playstations, Xboxes and Wiis.

I think that the reason is the same: when you spend money on one, you buy into a community and an ecosystem. You become a part of a tribe and naturally begin to see the world in an us vs. them paradigm.

It's worth noting that this is an irrational behaviour set, and best avoided if you want to learn anything objective. In typically-emotive arguments like these, you have to make the decision yourself and realise that, whatever you choose, you'll likely justify it to yourself afterwards however you can. Once you start to realise that, you begin to realise how inconsequential "what type of tablet or console you own" is, and the less likely you'll be to fall into that destructive us-vs-them mindset.

</comment><comment><USER15> Was I the only one who saw the irony that the author asking for civility didn't even make it one paragraph without having a dig at people who use the word "fanboi" by calling them faux hipsters? That's not very kind now is it?

These threads remind me of reading newspaper articles that discuss how uncivil our current political discourse is compared to the far more civil past. And you can read essentially the same article from a 1880's/1950's/2012 newspaper archive.

<comment><USER16> You are not.

> Everyone has opinions about consumer electronics. Everyone's entitled to > them, even when they're wrong. I owned and liked a Windows Tablet PC at one > time!

This was also telling, as it was itself a pretty clear insult, going so far as to call an opinion wrong, buried in a plea for people to be more careful with their arguments.

(In fact, I flagged this "Tell HN"--not that I imagine it will matter--as I believe that it is actually worse than having the threads of people arguing with each other.)

<comment><AUTHOR> This comment seems odd. You are suggesting that being told you're wrong is equivalent to being insulted. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but it is wrong. And no, I'm not insulting you. People differ about all sorts of things, that's the way the world is. And people have strong opinions.

I'm very ok with people telling me I'm wrong. Sometimes they're right about that, sometimes they're, how shall we put this, "mistaken" about my being wrong. But that doesn't mean they're insulting me. I could only be insulted if I have tied the idea of infallibility to my self-worth, if being found to be wrong is some kind of social shame.

If I had _that_ idea, I'd vigorously dispute anyone arguing with me, like I'm doing right now :-)

 __ __*

Ok, I've had my little joke. In all seriousness, I did own a Tablet PC, and I liked it, even if many people told me that I had overpaid for an underpowered laptop with a flakey pen interface and a lack of decent software. Was I wrong? maybe, maybe not. But I certainly am not intending to insult anyone by suggesting that their worth is somehow connected to whether I agree or disagree with them on the subject of Tablet PCs.

<comment><USER16> I am perfectly happy if someone tells me that I am wrong on a matter of fact, especially if when I ask there is some argument to back it up. One of my IRL "catch-phrases" is, in fact, "touche, you win this round, my good man ;P".

However, that's not the kind of statement you made. To demonstrate this with a concrete contextualized example, instead of writing this response, I could have instead said the following: "well, people are entitled to their misunderstandings about discourse; I mean, I actually used to have the same wrong opinion you currently do, so none of us are beyond reproach".

Of course, that statement would add nothing: by your own criteria (We need to ask ourselves, "What understanding would my comment add?") I would have made a comment whose sole purpose is to throw in a bit of rhetoric for which the only realistic goals would be 1) to play towards audience members who agree with me and 2) to fluster you by belittling your opinion in a highly flippant manner.

In the case of your comment, it was even weirder, hence the response to the person pointing out "irony": you seriously took an article you posted about how people were making pointless comments over something you claimed wasn't important and used that as an opportunity to make an equally pointless comment about the _exact same topic_.

This, in one fell swoop, both demonstrated that you actually felt someone _can_ be "wrong" on this specific topic (which is exactly what the people in these flame wars believe and is why they bother to spend so much time arguing with each other instead of just saying "that is your opinion, I have mine; opinions are awesome!"), while at the same time making it clear that you felt that a specific one of the two parties you were arguing about was on that "wrong" side.

I will then go so far as to say: how much more "ironic" can one man get?

(Note: I am pretty certain I have not participated in a single iPad Mini or Surface discussion; looking through my history, the last comment I made on a similar overall topic was in regards to the iPhone 5's larger screen almost a month ago, and I was commenting on a specific sub-argument, taking no overall stance on the high-level war people like to wage. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4609243> I say this to disclaim quickly that I am not "in the middle of one of these arguments" and thereby emotionally flustered at being called out by your overall article topic.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't go along with "You win this round," as this isn't really a debate for points but rather a coöperative game where we're all seeking some sort of optimum experience for HN.

In that spirit, I will say, "Nice move!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always wondered if the down-vote should actually just be an arrow pointing sideways. People use the down-vote like it's a thumbs down. If they don't agree with an opinion, then it's a thumbs down. But really the cancerous comments are ones that, in an offline conversation, a group would quickly and politely move past and ignore. The sideways arrow would represent brushing these comments aside.

Besides, you're supposed to up-vote comments you don't necessarily agree with so long as they are well argued. That is what a good debate is about.

<comment><USER18> Maybe there should be an "x" for hide. The comment's would disappear and it would register as a downvote.

<comment><USER19> Maybe a 'Z' for end of the line. ZZZZZ...etc. Like take a nap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I concur. HN suffers from ye olde bike-shedding: people argue about trivial things, because the hard stuff is beyond their ability and/or inclination.

I regularly see long and technically strong articles sink with less than ten votes and zero discussion, while those lambasting Apple yet again get dozens of votes and comments. Add hair-splitting with strong passive-aggressive undertones, and what's left is vacuous and mildly toxic.

</comment><comment><USER21> Thank you for writing about this. Bickering about biases that an article or commenter might have is the least productive thing imaginable. We all have biases, we all have one product that we prefer over another. If you have a well developed reason for that preference, I want to hear it and hope that you'll share it. But, when I come across a post/comment that is clearly of no substance, my first reaction is to ignore it and move on with my day. Life is too short to waste time and typing on attacking someone for sharing something of little value.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Uncivil"? "Inappropriate"? "Bile"? "Divisive incivility"?

Those are pretty strong words. All I've seen is a few geeks trading opinions about--ultimately petty--consumer electronics issues.

It's all just opinion. Nobody's said "Person X is ignorant waste of consciousness and they should kill themselves" (which would be uncivil, inappropriate, bilious, and divisive.) They just have opinions about products. Products that in the grand scheme of human achievement _really aren't that important_.

You're just causing even more drama with this self-righteous post. It's all, like, _your opinion_ , man; take it easy, let the geeks bicker (relatively politely) about fruit versus miniature eiderdown, and save the outrage for things that are truly worth it.

Edit: I'm not going to upvote this parent meta-post, and neither should you, dear reader, for it itself is the one causing drama, not the majority of posts on HN in the past few days.

<comment><USER7> > "Uncivil"? "Inappropriate"? "Bile"? "Divisive incivility"?

From literally the story directly under this one, #2 over all at the moment:

> Its an appeal to the Apple sycophants who troll this web site: "oh no who > dares best my beloved Apple?!? I'd better click!"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4706953>

As I post this, the karma on that comment is currently > 0\. Comments like that didn't used to happen "back in the day". Then they happened infrequently but pretty much everybody downvoted them into oblivion. Now they happen as a matter of course and get voted up instead of down.

The level of discourse has unquestionably gone downhill.

<comment><USER22> Oh, please. That comment is _in reply to one_ at the _very, very bottom_. (As I'm viewing it.)

Cherry-picking a single--frankly, not really that rude or terrible--comment isn't proving anything.

In either case, the "good old days" never existed. See: [http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software- sundays-2-the-...](http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software- sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/)

I get it, though. It feels good to be self-righteous. So let's go nuts, let's have this little drama in this thread and give PG and the mods another headache they don't want or need. As the owner of a social network for over five years, I feel for them.

<comment><USER7> > I get it, though. It feels good to be self-righteous.

This is, to put it mildly, uncharitable. If you're only interested in being part of the problem, I don't think we're going to find anything useful to say to each other, and I'll bid you adieu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thank you for saying this. The comments I saw on yesterday's post by Marco Arment really upset and concerned me.

Hacker News is usually a pretty nice place to hang out, but that comment thread reminded me of the ten minutes hate from 1984.

</comment><comment><USER24> It seems to me that conflict of this type arises when people are forced to make difficult choices between similar options with real but minor differences which have a large switching cost. Hence Nikon vs. Canon and Android vs. iOS. And of course religion.

The conflict doesn't arise when switching cost is low or the differences are too minor (e.g. Sony TV vs. Panasonic TV, Verizon vs. AT&T, Unitarianism vs. Baha'i fail to generate rancor on both counts).

The conflict would appear to arise from people struggling with cognitive dissonance. In other words, if an iOS or Android user were supremely confident of the superiority and perfection of their chosen platform there would be no dissonance and and no outward invective.

Just as Freud (correctly, for once) observed that the most passionately homophobic individuals were often in denial of their own urges, the most fervent boosters of a platform are probably plagued with doubts about it.

</comment><comment><USER25> For whatever it's worth, I'm the guy who wrote the Surface review trending today. I love reading HN every morning while I walk my dog, and I was dumbfounded that my Surface review made HN. That was a WTF moment for me. It's not the kind of stuff I come to HN for.

Don't get me wrong, I was honored - but it's off topic.

</comment><comment><USER26> _As hackers--and I include in this definition those who hack software, hardware, social behaviour, and marketplaces--our mission is first to UNDERSTAND and then second to INFLUENCE._

Maybe I can help with the understanding part. Here are some things that I've observed, as a hacker, about humans:

1\. (most) people like to form groups and then compete with other groups

2\. (most) people enjoy feeling superior to other people

These are things that seem to have been true in any part of the world, throughout all of human history.

So what's our plan here? Are we going to turn hackernews into the only collection of humans to ever live that defies these rules? Is there some technical solution that will change fundamental aspects of human nature? Maybe getting rid of the voting arrows will remove all of the meanness and tribal thinking on the planet.

I say all this because I don't understand the impetus for your post. Of course it would be nice if everything everyone said made an insightful contribution. But you know that people aren't like that. No amount of blog posting or commenting is going to change how people interact with each other. It seems like your problem isn't with the hacker news community, but with the nature of human socialization.

This looks like a clear case of selection bias. It's hard to do good as a hacker if you isolate yourself in an ivy tower of ycombinator hackers and geniuses. Making things does take some understanding of the average person and how they behave. If you truly think that hackernews is negative when compared with just about anywhere else, then you might be out of touch.

<comment><USER18> Many people, including the primary demographic of HN, like to also learn and have insightful discussions. We can get our competitiveness and tribalism out at sporting events We can have nice discussions here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You see, I had no idea of this current crisis until I read this thread. Really, what were reading threads about iPad Minis or MS Surface's going to add to my life? They are good products possibly but at this stage just small refinements on an existing category of device. So I never bothered to click. Sometimes I'm dismayed that people are wasting their time not just reading but writing long comments about these things. And not just new product releases but also nebulous, insight-free articles like that one about 'no more big ideas.' I suppose no one should be on their high horse though: few articles are 'essential reading' when it boils down to it.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's because HN has become the defacto comments section on every blog that has turned off comments. The comments are pretty much the same, just moved to a different place.

</comment><comment> grey-area If you disagree with the balance of stories on hn, the most useful thing you can do to fix it is visit /newest and vote up stories with interesting content. Nowhere near enough people do this and as a result many stories just slide off the new submissions page unread.

Re lack of civility, this is a normal feature of anonymous interaction which stems from lack of accountability - the only way to deal with it is to impose social sanctions on the users responsible. Everyone can do this by refusing to be baited, and calling out others for antisocial, insulting, or extreme comments.

Actions will have more impact that meta discussions.

</comment><comment><USER29> Having a meta discussion about this community doesn't seem very productive. The community is what it is and asking people to be civil is a waste of yet more bytes on a server.

As is evident by the comment threads on the tablet releases, people have strong opinions, supressing these with calls for 'civility' are nothing more than asking for people to only post comments that you approve of, which seems extremely bourgeois to me. I enjoy seeing the comments where people express strong opinions because I am able to learn for example what kind of person is going to like the Surface and who won't. There's signal in the noise and in a public forum it's not about what you want to read. If I could down vote your thread I would because I find it extremely distasteful to see someone wanting to read just what they enjoy. It's really no different to me posting an ASK requesting that we focus more on Python or jquery plugins. Please, less of the high horse rhetoric.

</comment><comment><USER5> So you're not happy with the current level of self-censorship in the name of political/social correctness, then? I find it _far more_ than sufficient.

As for the issue you're talking about, this guy here is obviously a flaming Microsoft-fanboy: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4706624> .. I _wanted_ to call him one, but refrained from doing so, mostly because I thought it would be met with a negative reaction.

But you know, talking to fanboys is really frustrating. Their posts are full of such obvious, annoying bullshit/misdirection that it's just really difficult to ignore, but on the other hand, going through the effort of shutting them up is pointless too.

That's why it's tempting to just call a fanboy a fanboy, instead of wasting a lot of time and effort in a _civil_ discussion with them.

</comment><comment><USER30> Amen - the launches of both Surface and iPad mini are to me terribly exciting events, and I am impressed with both Microsoft and Apple. One of my favorite parts of being a technologist is that I get to observe how people adapt the myriad of available technologies and software/hardware systems to their own unique needs, and this extends to even myself. I've been through Macs, Windows machines, and more Linux distributions than I can count, as well as handhelds from both the Android and iOS camps, and I've been happy each time I have switched setups.

As hackers, I believe we all subscribe to the old mantra that one should use what is best for the job at hand, and arguments about whether Microsoft Surface or iPad Mini or so on and so forth are the "right way" detract from the quest for knowledge in which all of us participate.

</comment><comment><USER31> How about this? pg is not willing/interested in implementing stricter filtering - it's a discussion that has come up many times in the past, but nothing has changed.

So can someone create a 3rd party site that displays HN, but removes/hides these off-topic posts? Then everyone would be happy. There are already some similar implementations (like <http://ihackernews.com> for a mobile version), so it can't be that technically difficult. It would also be great for users to be able to specifically block certain domains (e.g., I could get rid of all Gruber and Marco blog posts from the list of links I personally see).

Edit: this could also be done with a browser extension, but that wouldn't work on mobile devices (I think)

</comment><comment><USER32> The meta-commentary on here has become a parody of itself. Spend more time with your family, or outdoors, or doing just about anything else.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am at a loss for these arguments, I like what I like and I make no apologies for it. I prefer one system over another for a variety of reasons and I am not a fan of a company as it is a company. I may use their products because of reasons that make sense to me personally.

Performance, cost, usability, etc. are all factored into the system I use, the phone, tablet, etc. are all purchased based on these factors. If you do not like a particular product just do not buy it and if for some reason someone asks for your opinion on a product you can give it without being fanatical about it, it is just a product.

</comment><comment><USER34> > Because the stakes are so low

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences>

related: best God joke ever:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion>

</comment><comment><USER35> The root cause is simple human tribalism. We are, in general, people that pride ourselves on our intelligence, but we often don't turn that intelligence towards our social tendencies.

Liking or disliking Apple or Android or Windows... well sure. people can have preferences. But self identifying or rejecting people based on their computing software? Being rude to people because of their technology preferences?

Ask yourself, why do we do that? Does it make sense logically? Not really. But at an emotional level, it feels good to have a group of people who one can feel part of, and a group of people that are outside it that one can disparage as not being one of us. Making moral judgements based on what tech company a person likes? Human tribal groups.

The truth is, we can do better then that.

</comment><comment><USER36> On [Coinbase's announcement yesterday][1], I was concerned that the top 14 root-level comments were all focusing on the security implications of the announcement; it was as if there was nothing else to discuss other than that.

In many other discussions it seems like one controversial sub-topic ends up dominating as well.

Perhaps downvoting controversial comments isn't always a bad thing? There seems to be a big fear of the downvote button, but in some cases, even if a comment is useful on its own, in the end it sparks massive amounts of arguing back and forth which could be avoided if it were just downvoted instead.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703443>

</comment><comment><USER37> OP mentions downvotes. Are downvotes possible on HN? Are they reserved to some users only? Being a member for 4 years with less than 300 points, I don't have downvote icons on my page.

<comment><USER38> Downvote comments kicks in at 500 karma.

I don't know if downvote articles is an options.. maybe I just don't have enough Karma.

<comment><USER18> It's not and it never was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know there are a million and one people offering arm chair suggestions, but IMO it's about time that HN got sub-forums and moderators.

I'd like to see a /startup or similar, moderated by entrepreneurs to set the tone of what posts or comments aren't welcome.

For that matter, a /front-end would be cool too. HTML/CSS/JavaScript demos posted here grind my gears so much; the comments are all negative and totally not constructive.

</comment><comment><USER40> >>"What understanding would my comment add?"

Agree - this should be the default in any comment. It would be interesting to see a "karma" score for those who hold their tongue when they have nothing constructive to say, but obviously, that's pretty much impossible in an online format. In a way, the karma on a forum encourages opinions whether vacuous or not.

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe it's because we're so pathetic that we actually associate ourselves with the gadgets we use, and thus, we somehow perceive any attack/criticism of our favorite tech as an attack on us.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is Microsoft using people in some way to try and take over the psychology of HN'ers.

</comment><comment><USER43> *iPad

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it's either an iPad Mini or iPod Touch Ultra with iOS 6 Home Edition, but not an iPod Mini. Thanks!</comment></comment>


One free interaction - <AUTHOR> http://www.cooper.com/journal/2009/01/one_free_interaction.html

<comment><USER2> _I noticed two friends who use their mouse to repeatedly select and deselect text in web browsers as they read pages online. This is absolutely crazymaking for onlookers, but really satisfying for them._

I do this all the time. I hadn't ever really thought about it.

<comment><USER3> This drives everyone else crazy, except when I am doing it on the New York Times website, in which case it tries to define all these words for me, which drives _me_ crazy...

<comment><USER4> Me too, Dani! Add [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSear...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js) to your adblock filter and it will drive you crazy no more.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is a little GUI centric, but you can do this sort of thing in non- GUI apps too. How many of you emacs users idly press "C-x C-s" when you are sitting around thinking? I know I do it constantly. It feels good, and the only side effect is the reassuring message "(No changes need to be saved)"

<comment><USER6> Yup. I do the same though I only end up annoying myself, much like the above select-and-deselect-text posters when they're on nytimes.com, when I'm on the scratch buffer and I keep getting the "File to save in:" prompt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it most interesting that many of these interactions are analogues to a petting motion. I don't think it's an accident that we find these petting motions reassuring either. I would guess that it might have something to do with nit-picking (think early ape-like ancestors), or possibly something to do with bonding with dogs (who use rubbing motions of these sort to determine pack order). Probably the former, since, while man's interaction with dog is very old, it's probably not old enough to have evolved a self-gratifying feedback loop.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like gaming these free interactions. For instance, some computer track nubs have an autocorrect that stops the mouse pointer moving if it moves at a steady rate for long enough. The autocorrect puts an inverse velocity on the mouse pointer, so if you hold the nub steadily to the side for long enough and release, the mouse pointer moves on its own. I try to see how fast I can make it automatically move.

Also, when I'm bored, I like jiggling the compviz windows. That truly is a killer app.

</comment><comment><USER9> Recently I installed a script on my website to track peoples' mouse movements. First thing I noticed was a user just clicking around in circles in empty space.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seeing the headline, I thought 'one free interaction' was some sort of free- trial business-model analysis.

Clicking through and seeing the context was UI, I then thought 'one free interaction' was perhaps some sort of first-time-confirm of major or dangerous operations, or a way to walk people through key steps once before they're really used.

Turns out it's something else entirely... that's misnamed. I suggest instead 'playful interfaces' or 'fidget-friendly interaction'.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it's usually about being in control - Firefox 3 makes it even better because of the faded visual drag representation.

</comment><comment><USER12> My pithy one line take on the article: try to keep interfaces and interactions fun, not just easy to use.</comment>


Twitter to name Jack Dorsey permanent CEO: report - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitter-to-name-jack-dorsey-permanent-ceo-report-2015-09-30 <comment><USER2> Makes @sacca tweet from this morning kinda interesting.

[https://twitter.com/sacca/status/649219170106605568](https://twitter.com/sacca/status/649219170106605568)</comment>